Dinner Time and things that come with it :

the relationships between the members of this family are different  from my own, not that i am saying every family is the same, but at times i almost felt like a person on a TV series such as wife swap, opposite families make for the best entertainment as shows such as the wife swap know. The positions the the mother and the father of this family held are very different from my own. For example, the mother of the family, Isabelle, grew up in the north of France, and has been living in the south with the rest of her family for 4 years. I found that she loved to read, but hated to cook, which surprised me, as France being one of the countries best known for it's food, every meal was what my own mother would cal an 'easy meal' canned soup and vegetables, frozen quiches and pies even dehydrated potatoes! Of which she turned into mash  potatoes, although compared to mashed potatoes I've had in the past, it was more like potato paste! the whole dynamic of dinner was also completely different from what i was used to. for very meal we sat at the table which was in the kitchen, we each had our own seat and own napkin which had a different napkin ring on it for everyone, which the father had  made from wood, mine was in the shape of a sun. Isabelle, would sit at the head of the table, we first always had an 'starter' in winter which was the majority of my stay, it would always be soup. After everyone was finished Isabelle wold clear our bowls and start dishing out the main meal, one of my favourites was lightly fried green and yellow courgettes with salt and pepper, simple, yes, but delicious. When everyone was finished Isabelle would again clear our plates an bring out desert, which was normally yogurt of different varieties, some times it was those little pots yogurt comes i and was half chocolate and half vanilla, other times it was a rich creamy vanilla bean yogurt which was called framage blanc. once everyone had eaten the father of the family, Jean-Micheal would clear every ones plates and wipe down the table which was always covered with a plasticy tale cloth. Jean-Micheal would always do the cleaning up, from loading up the dish washer to doing he laundry, to cleaning out the two daughters rooms! As everyone ate diner together this meant that dinner time was usually around 7:30pm, and lasted until 8:10pm more or less.

This happened each night for dinner and on the weekends for lunch.

when we had dinner with friends of the family, it was usually more of a party like atmosphere. One time we travelled to Toulouse which was a three hour drive from Nimes, we were to stay with friends of the family, who live in a huge old hose which looked like an old barn house of some sorts. When we got there, a birthday party was taking place, mostly it was more friends of my host family and their children who were all 18-20 years old. we sat down at a long table at 7:30pm and the next time i got up was at 3:30am! Not all of this time was spent eating, one  of my Host family's favourite past time was playing games, and their favourite game was trivial quiz games, and their absolute trivial quiz game was called Times Up. I had never heard of this game before, and it is where you have two teams, each person in that team takes turns having a deck of cards with celebrities names on it, for the first round, you must try and get your team mates to guess the name on the card, for example you may say Windows or computers for Bill Gates, for the next round once all the cards have been used you can only say one single word, for example, you might say Birds for Alfred Hitchcock or Jedi for Anakin Skywalker, the third and final round, you cannot say anything, but mime, which ends up to be hilarious!

When i told my host family that i usually do not eat dinner with my family at the table, but in front of the TV they were shocked, as for them dinner is always,eaten at the table, without having the use of cell-phones or the TV in the background, i found this was there main time to talk about their day, my host sisters often got told off by their mother for using their phones or ipods at the table.

having dinner at the table compared to having dinner with the TV seems a lot better, but then again just because my family usually eats dinner in front of the TV doesn't mean that we do not talk about our days when we eat and we talk also about the programme that is on as well as other things, but at the same time i do think that it is important for families to still eat dinner at the table, when i was a kid i always used to eat dinner at the table, and i think that kids should have dinners, at least for the most part at the table with their families.